excogitate

And to speak generally, in regard of things celestial he set his face against attempts to excogitate the machinery by which the divine power formed its several operations.

From The Memorabilia by Henry Graham Dakyns

Here the little thinker is not often left to excogitate a theory for himself.

From Children's Ways by James Sully

The Apostle only commanded that each action and ceremony of God's worship be decently and orderly performed, but gives us no leave to excogitate or devise new ceremonies, which have not been instituted before.

From The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie

It was long before little Isie got to sleep, what with attempting to realize the actual condition of Alec Forbes, and trying to excogitate the best means for his deliverance.

From Alec Forbes of Howglen by George MacDonald

"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"

From Ghetto Tragedies by Israel Zangwill

Last month, having excogitated 290 questions and created perhaps the most elaborate thinking test ever devised, they stunned a group of the nation's smartest high-school graduates with it.

From Time Magazine Archive

I knew at once that she had excogitated it, and kept it in reserve for a good opportunity of impressing upon my mind what my money was.

From The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 by Various

The philosophies excogitated by the insulated intellect help nothing toward even a glimpse of these secrets.

From An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Hiram Corson

It was during this period that, with no other books than the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs, he excogitated his allegory.

From English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction by Henry Coppee

Here, for a week or a fortnight, the candidates sat and excogitated, unable to lie down at night, sleeping, if they could, in their chairs.

From Appearances Being Notes of Travel by G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes) Dickinson

It features essays by 22 scholars, all solemnly excogitating on such weighty matters as whether the horseshoes in his pictures are from dray horses or Thoroughbreds.

From Time Magazine Archive

Hence, too, it is that we hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other, and from similar or contrary or coadjacent.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 7 "Arundel, Thomas" to "Athens" by Various

He set about excogitating an alphabet; but actually forgot to give names to his letters, which afterwards baffled him before literary men.

From Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli

It is a marvellous thing that they who engage in excogitating this kind of double-meaning literature about bimetallism, should suppose that the people can any longer be deluded with it.

From The Arena Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897 by Various

An execrable Triumvirate—a scandalum magnatum to all public bodies: I suppose they and their adherents are now sitting in Pandemonium, excogitating their diabolical machinations against us.

From The Politician Out-Witted by Montrose Jonas Moses